The Medusa Amulet

by Robert Masello

  But when David burst into their alcove, Olivia wasn’t there. She might have been sleeping late that morning-David knew that she was a night owl-and it was also possible that she was off leading one of her tour groups. David was paying her a stipend out of Mrs. Van Owen’s account, but Olivia had plainly stated that she wanted to keep her other sidelines alive. “Otherwise, what do I do when you leave me to go back to Chicago?”

  With each passing hour, David found such a thought more distressing… and harder to imagine.

  But neatness, he would concede, was not one of her many virtues. She had left her yellow notepads, covered with long columns of dates and figures and names, scattered on the table, along with several broken pencils, some crumpled tissues, and a stack of old, leather-bound books that David hadn’t ever seen before.

  None of them, he discovered, were by or about Cellini.

  When David opened the first one, and did a rough translation from the Latin, he was surprised to see that it was called A Treatise on the Most Secret Alchemical and Necromantic Arts. Written by a Dottore A. Strozzi, it had been printed in Palermo in 1529.

  The one under that-really just a pair of worm-riddled boards, with a loose collection of parchment sheets held between-had no title page at all, but after glancing through some of the text, David could see that it was a manual of stregheria, the ancient witchcraft that predated the Roman Empire. As late as the twelfth century, many of the Old Religionists, as the followers of the pagan gods were sometimes called, had dutifully masqueraded as Christians while secretly continuing to worship the ancient pantheon. They had simply accepted the Virgin Mary, for instance, as yet the latest incarnation of the goddess Diana.

  He had just picked up the last book on the stack, a vellum-bound treatise, also in Italian, and entitled Revelations of Egyptian Masonry, as Revealed by the Grand Copt to one Count Cagliostro -at least this count, a famous mesmerist of his day, was familiar to David-when Dottore Valetta appeared in the alcove, a red silk pocket square blooming from his jacket. “Where is your confederate today?” he sniffed.

  “I’m not sure,” David replied, scanning the table quickly to see if Olivia had left him any note from the day before. It was then that he noticed the old yellowed cards-clearly the precursors to the same library request cards he and Olivia were using-that had been hidden under the pile of books. The director saw them, too, and before David could even say a word, he had snatched them up and quickly riffled through them, glowering.

  “Her old tricks,” Valetta fumed. “Signorina Levi is up to all her old tricks.”

  “What tricks are you talking about?”

  “Wherever she goes, she likes to stir the pot… to make trouble. She has tried to make this particular kind of trouble before.”

  David was utterly baffled. “What was she doing?” David asked. “Checking to see who had consulted these sources before we did?”

  Slipping the cards into his pocket, the director looked at David as if he wasn’t sure he could trust him anymore either. “She hasn’t told you her theory? Or why we have barred her from further use of the Laurenziana?”

  “No. She hasn’t.”

  Now the director looked as if he regretted saying as much as he had, or giving her ideas any further airing.

  But David wasn’t about to let him off the hook so easily. “So you have to tell me. If you don’t, I’ll make sure she does. What’s this theory of hers?”

  It was clear that Valetta was choosing his words carefully when he spoke. “Signorina Levi believes that my predecessors at the library were Fascist sympathizers and collaborated with the Nazi regime.”

  David was nonplussed.

  “And let me hasten to add, she has never summoned any credible proof of these charges. She simply throws them around,” the director said, whisking his hand through the air, “like confetti. And without any regard for the damage such accusations could do to the reputation of this institution.”

  While it was true that Olivia had never confided to him anything of this nature, David did not have much trouble imagining it. As an Italian and a Jew, whose own family had been decimated by the Fascist regime, Olivia might well have formulated such a theory. And Mussolini had indeed thrown in his country’s lot with the Third Reich. But how this theory of hers had anything to do with the books of black magic that were also sitting on the table, David had no idea.

  Nor did he have time to ask Dr. Valetta before they both heard Olivia explode from the end of the long gallery.

  “What is he doing here?” she said. “Get out of there!” she shouted, and two or three researchers looked up from their seats in horror at this gross breach of decorum.

  Storming into the alcove, her familiar overcoat flapping wide, her dark eyes darted around, swiftly taking in the dismantled stack of books, the loss of the borrower cards, and the look of confusion on David’s face.

  “I can explain everything,” she said to David.

  “I already have,” Dr. Valetta put in dryly.

  “Oh, I’m sure you have.” Turning back to David, she said, “This man is just a functionary, another cipher”-she snapped her fingers to indicate what a trifle she was dealing with-“like all the others, who did the bidding of their overlords. Who knows who he really works for? God save us from the bureaucrats who clung to their desks while the Huns sacked the city!”

  “All right,” Valetta said, “I’ve heard it all before, and I don’t need to hear it all again. Pack your things, Signorina, and get out of my library-”

  “ My library?” Olivia exclaimed.

  “-and understand that you will never again receive permission to enter here.”

  “But I am employed by Signor Franco,” she said, holding her hands out toward David.

  “I don’t care if you are sent here by the Pope himself. You’re not getting in.” The director turned slightly, to block out Olivia and address solely David. “You are welcome to continue to use our facilities, so long as I believe you are confining yourself to legitimate fields of study. And as long as you are working alone.”

  David was incensed himself. No one had ever suggested censoring, or even monitoring, his work. “What are you saying? That you plan to approve, or disapprove, of my requests for material from now on?”

  “Absolutely. And from that I will know whether or not you’re pursuing your own ends, or trying to assist Signorina Levi in hers.”

  “That’s outrageous.”

  “That’s necessity.”

  “Then you won’t be seeing me here again, either,” David said, calling his bluff. In point of fact, he had already decided to follow the mirror, copy or not, to France, but it didn’t hurt to make a bold stand. “And I’ll be sure to tell Mrs. Van Owen that her donations would be better spent elsewhere.”

  For a second, Dr. Valetta looked stricken. “As I have said, it is only Signorina Levi who has broken-”

  “We’ll be packed and gone in five minutes,” David said, turning his back on him. Even Olivia looked surprised at this turn of events. “Gather your things,” he barked at her, and she quickly swept her pencils and pads into a pile on one side of the table.

  Once that was all done, they walked in shame, like Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden, down the length of the reading room, past the astonished stares of the other occupants, down the steps, and out into the courtyard, where Olivia immediately wheeled on him, and said, “I’m sorry, David. I’m so sorry. It was only while you were at the Accademia. I just wanted to tie up some loose ends on an old project of mine.”

  “Don’t we have enough to do already?” David asked.

  “I wasn’t going to get another chance.”

  “To do what?”

  “To prove that the Nazis had a special place in their hearts for Florence… and why.”

  On the one hand, David was surprised that this was where she had been going, but on the other, it suddenly made perfect sense and brought together many separate strands of her research
and proclivities.

  “The Nazis not only looted Florence of its art,” she said, as they walked toward the Piazza San Marco, “they also pillaged its books and libraries and monasteries, searching for secrets that would add to their power.”

  “Like ancient Egyptian rites?”

  “Don’t laugh,” she warned. “Hitler believed in the occult. His top officers believed. The Third Reich was as mystical as it was military. No one must ever forget that.”

  But much as David would have liked to stop and explore her theories further, right now he was trying to focus on their next move. “Where did you park your car?” he asked.

  “I didn’t. It’s out of gas.”

  He lifted his arm and waved for the first cab coming by.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To your place.”

  Olivia looked surprised but not displeased.

  “You have to pack a bag.”

  “Why?” she asked. “Where do you think we are going?”

  “To Paris.”

  A white Fiat taxi cut across three lanes and jolted to a stop. She slid over in the backseat, David joined her, and the cabbie took off for the Piazza della Repubblica, the tinny sound of ABBA emanating from his radio. After a minute or two, Olivia couldn’t contain herself any longer and said, “What is in Paris that is so important?”

  He opened his valise as the cab hung a sharp left, throwing her up against his shoulder, and showed her the facsimile pages from the Medici records. As she scanned the pages, he explained in a low voice how he had come across them, and why he was so sure it was La Medusa they referred to.

  Olivia’s dark eyes absorbed every word and notation before she nodded solemnly, and said, “Then it does exist.”

  “Or at least it did.”

  “But what if, as you said, it’s just a copy?”

  “Without the original to compare it to, who’s to say? I was sent to find it, and that’s what I intend to do.” What he did not say was what he felt in his heart, as surely as he could feel it beating. This was the real Medusa, and returning with it to Mrs. Van Owen would seal their bargain. He believed in it, like so much else now, because he had to. For his own sake, and Sarah’s.

  “If it went to France,” she said, thinking aloud, “then it would have become a part of the crown jewels.”

  “Exactly,” David replied. “Until the Revolution.”

  “When it was turned over to the citizens of the French Republic.”

  With Olivia, David never had to finish a thought. As the cab beat a path through the swarming, horn-blaring traffic, Olivia stared silently out her window and David, his mind going a mile a minute, was trying to organize the next leg of his journey and wondering how fast he could get it done. Taking out his phone, he quickly began scanning for flights to Paris. Cost was no object, but timing might be. Olivia would have to collect a few things, he would have to go back to the Grand for his own belongings, and then they’d need to get to the airport.

  “How long do you expect me to stay on this job?” Olivia said.

  “As long as it takes,” David said, concentrating chiefly on his cell-phone screen. Alitalia had a flight at three that they might be able to make if they hurried.

  “But why,” she said, with an uncharacteristic hesitancy, “do you want me?”

  “My French is really rusty,” David replied, before thinking.

  And he could all but feel her fold in on herself.

  And what made it worse was, it wasn’t even true. He just didn’t know how to tell her what he was really feeling and thinking. Here he was, on a desperate mission to save his sister, and he hadn’t confessed even that to her yet. He had so much to tell her that he didn’t know where, or when, to start. And in the back of a hurtling cab, it seemed like the worst possible time.

  “Olivia,” he tried to begin, “I do need your help with this work. If anybody can help me cut through the thicket of the French archives and bureaucracy, it will be you.”

  “So that’s the reason?” she said. “You just need me to help you with your… quest?”

  God, he had gotten off on the wrong foot again. His French wasn’t nearly as rusty as some of his other skills.

  The taxi had stopped at a busy crosswalk, but the driver, fed up with the unimpeded flow of pedestrians, leaned on his horn again and to a chorus of jeers, plowed through a narrow opening and sped on. Normally, David would have been appalled at such recklessness, but today he was thrilled.

  “And this person you work for-” Olivia ventured.

  “Mrs. Van Owen. A widow, in Chicago.” He knew he was painting a more staid portrait than was warranted. “Very rich. She’ll continue to pay for everything.”

  “You say she is willing to do anything to get this Medusa.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you?” She looked at him intently now. “Why do you want to find it so much?”

  “I’ll get a big promotion,” he said, not wanting to get into the whole story yet. Not here, not now. “And I’ll be well paid.”

  She frowned, and, shaking her head, said, “No, no, no.”

  Not for the first time, he felt like she could see right through him.

  “You are not someone who works for money.”

  “I’m not?” Pretending otherwise.

  “No, you are like me. We don’t care about money,” she said. “We only care about knowledge, and truth. If we cared about money, we would do some other kind of work than this. We would be bankers.” She said that last word as if she were saying swine.

  Overall, he took her point.

  “No, what we do,” she concluded, “we do for love. There is some love at the root of this-always-and it is personal, too. That is what is pushing you.”

  It was as if she’d shot an arrow right into his heart. He longed to tell her about the real stakes he was playing for-he ached to unburden himself of the truth about his sister and the strange promise of his mysterious benefactor-but he was afraid he would sound crazy. Even to someone as open-minded as Olivia.

  “If we are going to do this thing together,” Olivia said, “from now on you are going to have to tell me only the truth.” As the cab slowed down to check the street addresses, she pressed him. “Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  “On the right,” Olivia said to the driver. “Next door to the cafe.”

  They got out of the cab, went inside, and climbed three stories of rickety steps with worn carpeting; it made his own place, David thought, look pretty good by comparison. On the third floor, Olivia stopped at a door decorated with a postcard of the Laocoon and put the key in the lock. Something seemed to surprise her, as if the lock had already been turned; but she opened it and stepped inside.

  Even with the curtains drawn, David could see the chaos. And when Olivia flicked on the lights and saw her books strewn across the floor and a wooden perch of some kind toppled over, she said, “Oh my God.”

  It was plain she’d been burglarized, but it wasn’t so plain that the thieves were gone.

  “Hold on,” David said, stepping in front of her and moving cautiously toward the next room. As he approached the half-open door, he thought he heard some commotion inside, and was about to back off when something gray suddenly flew smack into his face, wings fluttering wildly, before careening off into the living room.

  “Glaucus!” Olivia cried.

  And then David heard another noise-a muffled groan-from the bedroom. He pushed the door wider with one finger and saw a man with a gag in his mouth, half-on and half-off the bed. His hands dangled above his head, tied with a phone cord to the bedstead. Dried blood was caked all over his face and neck.

  As David rushed to his aid, Olivia appeared in the bedroom doorway, and said in horror, “Giorgio?”

  By the time the ambulance had come and gone, and the police had finished interviewing Olivia, it was too late to make any of the flights David had hoped for. As far as the carabinieri were concerned, it had simply been
a break-in, and the old boyfriend had come back to collect his stuff at just the wrong time. Olivia said she was missing some cheap jewelry, but that was about it. “I’m just glad he didn’t take any of my books,” she told the cops. “They’re the only valuable things in here.”

  For much of the time, David had sat outside on the stoop, thinking and keeping his own counsel. It didn’t seem to have occurred, even to Olivia, that this could be anything more than a burglary gone awry. But to David, who had been nearly run over at the skating rink, it seemed like some very odd things had been happening since he’d gotten mixed up with Mrs. Van Owen. And was this one of them? Or was the strain on his nerves just getting to him? He checked his watch again, recalculating how quickly he could be on his way to Paris.

  And when the last police car pulled away, Olivia settled down beside him and said, “Giorgio and I broke up a few months ago. He’d been on a sabbatical in Greece.”

  “Then you’re okay?” David said, draping an arm consolingly around her shoulders.

  She sighed, and fumblingly lighted a cigarette.

  “You don’t need to stay here to look after Giorgio?”